From 1897-1899 but within a period of 2 years in Harvard he left with out a degree. Frost died in Boston on January 29th, 1963 at the age of 89 but he succeeded in realizing his life ambition: to write ‘’a few poems it will be hard to get rid of’’.
R.S Thomas (the writer of lore) was also one of the most highly respected poets around; born in Cardiff in 1918 he was educated at the university college of north Wales, Bangor. He received his theological training at St. Michael’s, Cardiff. At Manafon he wrote nearly all poems which were published in his first three volumes eg. The Stones of the field(1952), An acre of land(1952), and the minister(1955), some of the more earlier poems include, ‘Out of the hills’, ‘A Labourer’, and ‘A Peasant’. Which again like Lore are all to do with the country side, which is properly to do with his Welsh background.
Seamus Heaney (the writer of follower) is properly the best poet in the world and this was shown when he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1995. He was born in county Derry on April 13th , 1939 .since ‘death of naturalist’ he has published many other poems eg: ‘door into the dark’, ‘winter out’, ‘north’, ‘field work’, ‘the haw lantern, etc. which of course are all brilliant poems like follower itself. They say Heaney was inspired by the troubles in his home town of Belfast but later was forced to leave because of the troubles. Heaneys poetry became full of images of deaths after his mother died in 1984.his father died three years later and he was also to pay tribute to him through his verse. Heaney hasn’t died yet and is still writing poetry and hopefully he does carry on until he does die.
An old mans winter night is a poem about an old man that lives on his own in the middle of nowhere really. We know things like he lives alone eg: ‘‘one man cant keep a house’’ and .......’’that gathered in the empty rooms’’, and we know that he is not very well eg: ’’and eased his HEAVEY BREATHING but still slept’’. He also talks about ‘’beating on a box’’ which tells us that he thinks he’s going to die some time soon.
An old mans winter night is a very puzzling poem to say the least, lines such as
‘’All out of doors looked darkly in at him through the thin frost almost in separate stars’’
‘’A light he was to no one but himself’’
‘’Is thus he does it of a winter night’’
Make no sense to me. But although it is puzzling it also has a hidden meaning which is: old men cant live alone in the countryside!!!
The poem follower is about a relationship between a young boy and his father. The young boy is always following the father when he goes out to plough the fields because one day the boy wants to be just like his father and grow up to be a farmer. But he is always annoying the father:
‘’ I was a nuisance, tripping, falling, yapping always’’
I can imagine why he wants to be like his father because its mentions him being very strong and well built:
‘’His shoulders globed like a full sail strung between the shafts of the furrow’’
Years later the boy lives his dream of being a farmer but he says:
‘’it is my father who keeps stumbling behind me, and will not go away’’
the hidden meaning behind this is, ‘’we are going to get old and we might not be able to cope, ourselves.
The poem Lore is about an eighty five year old man called Job Davies who seems a quite active man for his age because it says he: ‘’mowed where the grass grew’’ AND ‘’never mind the machine, whose fuel is human souls’’.Being an old miserable man isn’t an option to him, he says ’’miserable? Kick my arse’’.
Even though it does not say it I think he lives in the country, because it mentions him using a scythe and there is not much you can use a scythe for in the town. The hidden meaning behind this poem is, live large and dream small.
An old man’s winter night and follower are similar in the way that they are both set in the countryside and have old men as the main character. The way they are wrote is different as well, follower is wrote in paragraphs and an old man’s winter night has no paragraphs at all. The structures of the poems are totally different. An old man’s winter night is wrote far more puzzlingly than follower, it uses lines and words that have no effect on me at all like: ‘’its thus he does it of a winter night’’. Good poems don’t have to be full of hard words and lines that have no meaning. Heaney admires frosts’ writing because it is similar to his own because frost likes writing about things in the country and Heaney seems to like his style. Lore is similar to both it’s similar to follower in the way that they both are wrote in paragraphs. They are all different in the way that they are wrote , An old man’s winter night does not rhyme at all , Follower only half rhymes and Lore rhymes the whole way through the poem.
And to conclude my essay I will comment a bit on my favourite poem from all three. Out of all three I enjoyed Lore the most because I like poems that rhyme and that are wrote in the way that the writer really describes things so that you can actually picture what is going on in the poem. .What I also like about that poem is that it is short and sweet, I dislike poems that ramble on and on, after the first few lines I loose interest in them but that did not happen with this poem.